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Rise Above with Kevin Lanning: Daily Summaries Delivered
by Kevin Lanning
Welcome to Rise Above with Kevin Lanning. Join Kevin, a former Google executive in sobriety, as he shares inspiring stories of resilience. Each episode features individuals who have faced life’s toughest challenges—addiction, trauma, anxiety, and more—and emerged stronger. These conversations aren’t just about survival; they’re about thriving and finding practical solutions to rise above adversity. Kevin’s own journey through addiction and childhood trauma fuels his passion for sharing stories that uplift, educate, and inspire. Discover the strength within you.
Latest Episodes
The most recent episodes — sign up to get AI-powered summaries of each one.
- 2 days ago1h 14m
I Was Snorting Fentanyl Every Day...Now I'm 3 Years Sober
From the outside, Mike Van Holderbeke had no reason to end up where he did — a two-parent home, food in the fridge, gifts under the tree, a successful older brother. But addiction doesn't discriminate. What started with weed in seventh grade and a single oxycodone he calls "the warm blanket" spiraled into a full-blown fentanyl and benzo addiction — crushing pills behind the wheel, surviving multiple seizures, losing his best friend to an overdose, and eventually watching 16 officers raid his home. He got sober the day he was sentenced to prison, and served 15 months. Prison could have broken him. Instead, with the help of a counselor who became a beacon of hope and a sponsor he met on the inside, Mike used the time to rebuild himself from the ground up. When he came home, he found the thing that changed everything: running. He ran his first marathon alone around his neighborhood on Christmas Day — and today, 3 years sober at 27, he logs over 100 miles a week and spends his life showing other people that the past doesn't have to define them. This is one of the most inspiring comeback stories we've had on the show. Sponsored by Caron Treatment Centers My recovery journey began at Caron Treatment Centers, and the care I received there changed the course of my life. That's why I'm proud to partner with Caron. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, Caron has been helping individuals and families find hope and lasting recovery for nearly 70 years. They are in-network with all major insurance providers, and same-day admission is available. ➡️ Learn more: https://www.caron.org/lp/rise-above 📞 Call Caron today: 855-352-0103 Recovery starts with taking the first step. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
- 4 days ago1h 40m
Cocaine, Nightclubs & the FBI | Ingrid Casares Reveals Her Wild Addiction & Recovery Story
Ingrid Casares lived through the cocaine-fueled Miami of the 1980s, multiple trips to treatment, relapse, fame, the height of the South Beach nightclub scene — and even a federal investigation that brought the FBI to her door. In this episode of Rise Above with Kevin Lanning, Ingrid opens up about discovering cocaine as a teenager, how quickly addiction consumed her life, running away, treatment and relapse, and eventually finding sobriety. Her life then took an unbelievable turn. Ingrid became a major figure in Miami nightlife, co-founding the legendary nightclub Liquid while sober and building a life she once never thought possible. But success didn't make her immune to addiction. She shares how relapse returned years later — including after being prescribed Vicodin following surgery — and how one drink eventually progressed into drinking tequila every day. Today, Ingrid is seven years sober again and shares what decades of addiction, relapse, recovery and the 12 Steps have taught her about staying sober one day at a time. This is a story about addiction — but even more importantly, it's about second chances. If you or someone you love is struggling, please know that recovery is possible. Subscribe to Rise Above with Kevin Lanning for more conversations about addiction, recovery, trauma and the people who have found a way forward. Sponsored by Caron Treatment Centers My recovery journey began at Caron Treatment Centers, and the care I received there changed the course of my life. That's why I'm proud to partner with Caron. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, Caron has been helping individuals and families find hope and lasting recovery for nearly 70 years. They are in-network with all major insurance providers, and same-day admission is available. ➡️ Learn more: https://www.caron.org/lp/rise-above 📞 Call Caron today: 855-352-0103 Recovery starts with taking the first step. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
- 6 days ago1h 13m
I Overdosed on Heroin at 20 | Beauty Queen Reveals the SHOCKING Addiction That Nearly Killed Her
From the outside, Victoria Treadwell was the picture of the all-American girl — raised on a 295-acre dairy farm in upstate New York, a crowned dairy princess and beauty queen, an honor-society athlete who seemed to do it all. What no one saw was the addiction underneath. Chasing acceptance and drawn to the "bad boy," she was introduced to heroin in a Walmart parking lot as a teenager, and within a year and a half it nearly killed her. In June 2016, at just 20 years old, she overdosed — waking up to CPR on a kitchen floor after being brought back with Narcan twice. That night became the turning point. Through outpatient treatment, hard-won boundaries, and cutting ties with the people who kept her sick, Victoria rebuilt her life from the ground up. Today she's 10 years clean — a certified surgical technologist, a college graduate chasing PA school, a marathon runner, and a national pageant finalist who now uses her crown and her platform to prove that addiction doesn't discriminate. Her story is living proof that one choice can send your life in a completely different direction. Sponsored by Caron Treatment Centers My recovery journey began at Caron Treatment Centers, and the care I received there changed the course of my life. That's why I'm proud to partner with Caron. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, Caron has been helping individuals and families find hope and lasting recovery for nearly 70 years. They are in-network with all major insurance providers, and same-day admission is available. ➡️ Learn more: https://www.caron.org/lp/rise-above 📞 Call Caron today: 855-352-0103 Recovery starts with taking the first step. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
- 1 weeks ago1h 5m
I Was Severely Burned In A Fire At 14 | Then The Pain Meds Led Me To Fentanyl
William Ellis was 14 years old, a freshman in high school, when gas splashed onto him near a smoldering fire and he went up in flames from the waist up. He survived second- and third-degree burns, skin grafts, and months in a burn unit — but the narcotics that came home from the pharmacy with him started an addiction that would last most of his life. What began as prescribed painkillers turned into selling pills at school, forging prescriptions across four states with his mother, and eventually shooting heroin and fentanyl just to keep the sickness away. William is the third of the Ellis siblings to sit down on the show — after his sister Brittany and his brother Cody — and together their stories are one of the rawest portraits of the family disease we've ever aired. He buried both of his parents, bounced from ministry to ministry chasing a geographic cure, survived being electrocuted and flatlining on a job site, and finally found his way to treatment in South Florida with his brother's help. Today he's sober, married, working as an electrician, and building the kind of ordinary, grateful life he never thought he'd live to see. Sponsored by Caron Treatment Centers My recovery journey began at Caron Treatment Centers, and the care I received there changed the course of my life. That's why I'm proud to partner with Caron. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, Caron has been helping individuals and families find hope and lasting recovery for nearly 70 years. They are in-network with all major insurance providers, and same-day admission is available. ➡️ Learn more: https://www.caron.org/lp/rise-above 📞 Call Caron today: 855-352-0103 Recovery starts with taking the first step. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
- 1 weeks ago1h 38m
I Was A Straight-A Student Blacking Out Every Weekend By 13
Paris Bazley had her first drink at 13 — and blacked out that very first night. From the outside, nothing looked wrong: she was a straight-A student in AP classes, graduated high school two years early, joined a sorority at UCF, and became the bartender everyone loved. Underneath it, she was blacking out almost every time she drank, chasing the next party, and using alcohol and cocaine to fill a hole she'd carried since childhood. She survived a traumatic night at a sorority social and the disbelief that followed, and kept drinking to escape it — until her 21st birthday, when she found herself detoxing on her parents' couch without even understanding what was happening to her body. What turned it around was a phone call from her dad — six months sober himself — asking one simple question: "Are you okay?" That was the moment everything changed. Today Paris is coming up on two years sober, back in school, working as a nanny, training for a Hyrox, chairing her home meeting and serving as an intergroup rep — living proof for a younger generation that putting the drink down isn't the end of the fun. It's where the real life begins. Sponsored by Caron Treatment Centers My recovery journey began at Caron Treatment Centers, and the care I received there changed the course of my life. That's why I'm proud to partner with Caron. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, Caron has been helping individuals and families find hope and lasting recovery for nearly 70 years. They are in-network with all major insurance providers, and same-day admission is available. ➡️ Learn more: https://www.caron.org/lp/rise-above 📞 Call Caron today: 855-352-0103 Recovery starts with taking the first step. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
- 1 weeks ago1h 31m
My Dad Taught Me How To Do Cocaine At 16 | My Whole Family Was Addicted
Cody Ellis grew up as the youngest of three in a small Georgia town, and by the time he was a teenager, addiction had swallowed his entire family. It started when his older brother was severely burned in an accident at eight years old — the pain pills that followed pulled his parents in, and the household never came back from it. Cody watched his mother forge prescriptions, watched his family lose their home again and again, and was handed his first opioids at 13. By 16, his own father was teaching him how to use cocaine. What followed was more than a decade lost to methadone, pills, crack, and IV meth — cycling through jail, psychosis, and moments standing on the edge of a highway ready to give up. Both of his parents died in active addiction. But his sister got sober first, came back for him, and got him to treatment in Florida — and everything changed. Today Cody is four years sober, married to a woman in recovery, raising two kids, and chairing a meeting every week to give back what was given to him. This is one of the most raw examples of the family disease we've had on the show, and proof that the cycle can be broken. Sponsored by Caron Treatment Centers My recovery journey began at Caron Treatment Centers, and the care I received there changed the course of my life. That's why I'm proud to partner with Caron. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, Caron has been helping individuals and families find hope and lasting recovery for nearly 70 years. They are in-network with all major insurance providers, and same-day admission is available. ➡️ Learn more: https://www.caron.org/lp/rise-above 📞 Call Caron today: 855-352-0103 Recovery starts with taking the first step. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
- 1 weeks ago1h 15m
Alcohol Was The Only Thing That Quieted My Anxiety — So I Drank Until I Blacked Out
From the outside, Zac Spowart had every reason to be fine — loving parents, a disciplined home, good grades, a heart-surgeon father. But from around 13, he was being crushed by an anxiety so severe he was physically sick, throwing up before school with no idea why. Then he found alcohol, and for the first time the chaos in his head went quiet. That relief became the problem. Zac is honest that his isn't a story of a traumatic childhood — it's proof that addiction doesn't discriminate, and that what's happening inside someone's head can be enough. Through high school and college he chased that quiet, drinking daily just to function, cycling through a minor-possession arrest and two DUIs. Then, at 21, came the moment that changed everything: driving drunk with his younger brother in the passenger seat, Zac flipped the car. His brother fractured his neck — an injury doctors said could have left him paralyzed or worse, and one he survived by something close to a miracle. (His brother went on to face his own battle with addiction, and is sober today too.) Zac takes complete accountability for that night, and he's unflinching about the fact that even it didn't get him sober right away. What finally did was jail, a hard-nosed judge, court-ordered treatment, and a 12-step program where — reading the first 64 pages of the Big Book on a couch with no phone — he finally heard his own thoughts in other people's stories. Now 19+ years sober, Zac is an addiction counselor with a master's in the field, a world traveler who's been to 50+ countries, and the author of a new book on self-acceptance and conscious relating. He's candid about the hard parts of long-term sobriety too — a divorce, a suicidal stretch a couple years back, an injury that took away the diving he loved — and how gratitude, service, and doing the work carried him through. Sponsored by Caron Treatment Centers My recovery journey began at Caron Treatment Centers, and the care I received there changed the course of my life. That's why I'm proud to partner with Caron. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, Caron has been helping individuals and families find hope and lasting recovery for nearly 70 years. They are in-network with all major insurance providers, and same-day admission is available. ➡️ Learn more: https://www.caron.org/lp/rise-above 📞 Call Caron today: 855-352-0103 Recovery starts with taking the first step. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
- 2 weeks ago1h 39m
I Played In The NBA With LeBron...Then Lost It All To Addiction | How Delonte West Found Sobriety
Delonte West lived a dream millions of kids chase — a standout at Saint Joseph's, drafted into the NBA at 21, and years in the league alongside legends like Paul Pierce, Gary Payton, and LeBron James. He was, by his own description, sheltered inside the business of professional sports, growing as a player while the rest of life stayed on pause. When the game ended, everything he'd built his identity around went with it. In this conversation, Delonte is open about the long, slow progression of addiction that followed his career, his diagnosis and lifelong battle with bipolar disorder, and the years he spent cycling in and out of his lowest points — much of it playing out in the public eye in ways that were painful and dehumanizing. But this episode isn't about the videos the internet passed around. It's about the man behind them, and the work he's doing now. Delonte is coming up on a year sober this December, and he credits consistency, the right medication and treatment, his faith, and the people who never gave up on him. He's found peace in staying in the moment, and he's using his platform to reach the person out there who's still where he was. #RiseAbove #DelonteWest #AddictionRecovery #NBA #MentalHealthAwareness #RecoveryIsPossible #SoberLife#BipolarAwareness #Comeback #SobrietyJourney #SaintJosephs #Boston #RiseAbovePodcast #KevinLanning#SecondChances #MensMentalHealth #TheManBehindTheVideos #Redemption #YouAreNotAlone #OneMoreThing Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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About Rise Above with Kevin Lanning
Welcome to Rise Above with Kevin Lanning. Join Kevin, a former Google executive in sobriety, as he shares inspiring stories of resilience. Each episode features individuals who have faced life’s toughest challenges—addiction, trauma, anxiety, and more—and emerged stronger. These conversations aren’t just about survival; they’re about thriving and finding practical solutions to rise above adversity. Kevin’s own journey through addiction and childhood trauma fuels his passion for sharing stories that uplift, educate, and inspire. Discover the strength within you.
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